Pinterest Adds Duplicate Warnings on Site and Search Features on Mobile

Want to know something Pinteresting? America’s favorite image pinning site just added a bunch of new features on the web and on the mobile app!

Okay, I can’t take credit for the whole “pinteresting” usage, but it’s cute, it works, so let’s run with it. . . straight to the website.

This is Pinterest’s new duplicate warning system. It will pop up and warn you when you’re about to pin something you already pinned. Pinterest says users have been asking for this feature which is funny because there are billions of images in the world, so what are the chances that you’d accidentally pin the same image twice?

Pretty high, apparently. I don’t know if it’s because we travel in the same circles, are drawn to the same colors and faces or what; but we do tend to return to the same images over and over again. Is there a psychologist out there that can explain this?

The real irony is that Pinterest thrives on repeated postings. Scan the popular pictures and you’ll see the same pics turning up over and over again, each pinned and repinned by different people. A repin is a duplicate – but obviously, that’s not the point of this warning. This is for those people who have already pinned 500 pictures and can’t remember what they put up last week.

For those people – it’s a good thing.

Mobile Upgrades

For those who prefer to pin on the go, Pinterest just rolled out updates for both their iOS and Android apps. Highlights ahead:

Notifications: Pinterest added this feature to the website only a few weeks ago and now they’ve added it to mobile. For marketers, this little drop down is a gold mine of information. It shows you who repinned, liked or commented on your pins and it goes back a lot further than the original activity feed. If you’re really hot on this, you can set it to send you push notifications whenever someone interacts with your page. Wow, that could get crazy fast.

Mention your friends: Pinterest has added the ability to tag people when you post or comment. Just use the @ symbol to start the search. This is an interesting move because, to me, Pinterest has never be about people. It’s about pictures. But by allowing folks to tag other folks, you can draw them in to a conversation. (They get a notice when you tag them.) Now we’re putting the “social” in this social network.

Recent Searches: Pinterest upgraded the search engine so it not only remembers what you’ve searched for in the app, it will remember what you searched online, too. This can be a time saver if you often search the same words on Pinterest. And heaven only knows, when you’re on Pinterest, the last thing you want to do is waste time typing words in a search box.

Now, if they would just stop blocking my shortened links, I’d be a happy pinner!

What feature would you like to see added to Pinterest?

Patrick

Hi, I also got the duplicate pin warning for a while, but nowadays it seems gone. anyone knows if this is generally or only with my account?